Parsons Paris

July 9, 2020

A Look Back at an Exceptional (First) Year – Part 2 Creative Resilience

Spring 2020 will be remembered as a time of great changes, and Parsons Paris was not spared from its share of disturbance. Yet, First Year students showed impressive resilience and willingness to grow as students and citizens of a globalized world. Through the support and encouragement of their peers, instructors and the Student Success team, students managed to come up with creative ideas to reflect on their current locations, whether through the reinvention of their environment (Exploring a 8m3 space) or their relationship with the world (Wearable Sculptures).

Each semester, First Year students produce a piece of work based on their explorations of an 8 cubic meter space, in the “Space Materiality” class with Francesca Bonesio and Miriam Josi. This Spring, the project took on a poignant significance, since it was fully briefed and produced during COVID-19 confinement.

In their work, students reflected on the emotions the space incites, imagined what is beyond the space, meticulously identified what can fit into it, and expressed ways in which we move within a limited space and interact with those outside of it.

Joseph Anderson, “Packable”

Magalie Moussa, “Cloud nine”

Jiayi ZHU, “Piano caged”

Rizq Naherta, “Cubicle cosmos”

Sylwia Nazzal, “Caged”

With the “Wearable Sculptures” series, students had the added constraint of working only wit reclaimed material, or objects at hands. This constraint forced them to rethink their initial ideas which led some projects to reflect questionings around the environmental crisis happening at the same time. Other projects focused more on notions related to the confinement: deprivation of all sorts, limitations of movement, new kinships and personal relations. Yet, all projects shared a low tech aesthetic and thriving imagination!

Agnes Holm, “The Flower Head”

Samuel van Heijningen, “Seeing eye to eye machine”

Sylwia Nazzal, “Losing Motion”

Agave Shield, “Federica Toja”

The confinement became a source of inspiration and creativity. Putting this unique experience at a distance through careful observation, analysis of the feelings this situation was provoking in everyone, some students from Collective Works AMT decided to tackle these questions of emotional and intellectual changes with their group projects. Through the notion of “Invisibility”, they explored our world’s minute details, divergent and parallel temporalities, as well as immaterial thoughts and emotions.

In a similar manner, but using photography as their primary language, students from the First Year Studio Time were invited to think of the experience of their confined bodies in time, to self-reflective, sometimes apparently light, but thought provoking results.

Lastly, the confinement was also an opportunity for some students to go back home after several months abroad. For certain students, it was the occasion to reflect back on what they had left behind when coming back to Paris, what their cultural heritage meant to them and how they wanted to bring a part of it into their artistic or design practices. 

Integrative Studio 2 project by Devora Apostolova

Bulgarska shevitza is a journey towards my roots, my family and eventually myself that was only possible because of the current quarantine. This pandemic opposes great challenges for the whole world, however it might just be a blessing in disguise in many other ways. It allows you to spend time with your relatives, to slow down, to adapt and create something meaningful, deeply significant and beautiful out of something bad.